mulus. A third grasshopper
called in the grass, and Bevis ran down after him, but he, too, was too
cunning; then a glossy ball of thistledown came up so silently, Bevis
did not see it till it touched him, and lingered a moment lovingly
against his shoulder. Before he could grasp it, it was gone.

A few steps farther and he found a track crossing the hill, waggon-ruts
in the turf, and ran along it a little way--only a little way, for he
did not care for anything straight. Next he saw a mushroom, and gathered
it, and while hunting about hither and thither for another, came upon
some boulder-stones, like the one he had hurled down the slope, but very
much larger, big enough to play hide-and-seek behind. He danced round
these--Bevis could not walk--and after he had danced round every one,
and peered under and climbed over one or two, he discovered that they
were put in a circle.

"Somebody's been at play here," thought Bevis, and looking round to see
who had been placing the stones in a ring, he saw a flock of rooks far
off in the air, even higher up than he was on the hill, wheeling about,
soaring round with outspread wings and cawing. They slipped past each
other in and out, tracing a maze, and rose up, drifting away slowly as
they rose; they were so happy, they danced in the sky. Bevis ran along
the hill in the same direction they were going, shouting and waving his
hand to them, and they cawed to him in return.

When he looked to see where he was he was now in the midst of long
mounds or heaps of flints that had been dug and stacked; he jumped on
them, and off again, picked up the best for throwing, and flung them as
far as he could. There was a fir-copse but a little distance farther, he
went to it, but the trees grew so close together he could not go
through, so he walked round it, and then the ground declined so gently
he did not notice he was going downhill. At the bottom there was a wood
of the strangest old twisted oaks he had ever seen; not the least like
the oak-trees by his house at home that he knew so well.

These were short, and so very knotty that even the trunks, thick as they
were, seemed all knots, and the limbs were gnarled, and shaggy with grey
lichen. He threw pieces of dead stick, which he found on the ground, up
at the acorns, but they were not yet ripe, so he wandered on among the
oaks, tapping every one he passed to see which was hollow, till
presently he had gone so far he could not see the hi